Brandon Specktor

December 12, 2011 –
Bear in Heaven's 2009 album Beast Rest Forth Mouth earned the Brooklyn electro-rockers a glimpse of prime-time TV fame: 30 seconds of "You Do You" appeared during the 2010 Super Bowl Pregame Show, one of television's most-viewed programs of the year. Singer-keyboardist Jon Philpot, guitarist Adam Wills, and drummer Joe Stickney missed their half-moment in the spotlight, however, because they were otherwise occupied singing Baha Men songs and doing body shots at a pregame party.
"Thank God for TiVo," Wills tells SPIN in the East Village, New York studio Bear in Heaven have called home for the last nine months while laying down the 10 tracks on their third album, I Love You, It's Cool, due April 3.

December 4, 2011 –
What's black and white riddled with fuzz? No, not Jim James in a tuxedo... It's the Black Keys and Arctic Monkeys, who are spending 2012 together traipsing around North America on an arena tour kicking off March 2nd, a stone's throw away from Dan and Pat's Ohio hood.
Live Keys! Check out photos from the band's El Camino kick-off show in New York City.
This union of riff-roaring royalty feels oh-so-right: Both are recent SPIN covers stars, and both debuted rock-steady new albums in 2011 — the Monkeys' Suck It and See and the Keys' El Camino rocked the plaid off the flannel of our reviews staff.

November 16, 2011 –
On Sunday night, Courtney Love launched into a passionate (and profane) rant in the middle of a Hole set at Sao Paulo's SMU Festival after a fan waved aKurt Cobain poster in front of her. Today, the Love buzz continued as footage from the outrage-prone frontwoman's post-show interview hit the web.
"I own Nirvana with my daughter [Frances Bean]," Love explains in the interview. "Because of tax reasons I have to give that money to my sister, Kim Cobain, and [Kurt's mother] Wendy Cobain. Dave makes five million a show... why the fuck, then, does he have a Nirvana Inc. credit card and I don't?" Love goes on to accuse Grohl of purchasing an Aston Martin while Kurt's mother and sister freeze under the bridge that Kurt sang about in the Nevermind track "Something in the Way."
Love also trotted out tired old accusations about Groh's contributions to Nirvana's music.

October 21, 2011 –
For SPIN's November "Funny" issue, SPIN photographed Breaking band Grouplove during a day off between appearances at U.K. festivals. The Los Angeles freak-folk quintet led us all around London, eventually stopping to pose in an English garden, sectioned off in a corner of a public park. Singer-keyboardist Hannah Hooper frolicked and rolled around in the grass and foliage, and soon found out why, exactly, the garden was isolated: poison oak!
"I was really getting into the grass," Hooper tells SPIN, "and right after we left I was like, 'Guys. My face is burning!' It felt a lot like poison oak, which I'd had numerous times because my parents lived on a farm in Northern California and I always went exploring in the woods. We sent a picture to our manager's dermatologist, and he was like, 'Yep, that's a horrible case of poison oak on your face!' " Um, sorry about that, Hannah.

October 11, 2011 –
Maynard James Keenan hit the studio tucked into his wine cellar hard this year and emerged with Conditions of My Parole, Puscifer's second full studio album, which is available exclusively on SPIN.com a week before its official October 18th release.
"Musically, it's like Twin Peaks in the desert," Keenan tells SPIN of the LP, which was inspired by the vast, snake-infested outback surrounding his Northern Arizona vineyards. "You've got stories of ghosts and aliens, plus Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, liberals, vineyards, ranches, horses. It's hostile territory: You've got scorpions, black widows, brown recluse, javelina, rattlesnakes... and hippies."
With 16 musicians listed in the liner notes, Conditions of My Parole was made with the assistance of Puscifer's biggest posse yet. New contributors include ex-Mars Volta drummer Jon Theodor, L.A.

October 6, 2011 –
We love Tennessee's garage rockin' bad girls (and boy) Those Darlins for their blend of attitude and nostalgic sound, showcased on their solid 2011 sophomore album Screws Get Loose. After stripping off their clothes for the video of previous tune "Be Your Bro," the pretty Darlins offer a glamour-shot-filled clip for the title track -- watch it here.The song's a bit forlorn, with Jessi Darlin singing about coping with an unraveling life. "It's about spreading yourself thin, going out on a limb, feeling the need for independence but being uncomfortable being alone," Jessi tells SPIN.

September 29, 2011 –
If Skrillex's adrenaline-soaked beats have ever made you want to zipline from a hovercraft, you're in luck. EA Games approached the prolific producer to remix the theme song of their upcoming sci-fi shooter reboot, Syndicate. Download Skrillex's remix free from the game's Facebook, in exchange for "liking" the page.
Skrillex's mix is high-impact dubstep fare, frenetically mashing disco-house and electro noise. His two-and-a-half-minute track is one of four mixes being readied by big-name DJ/producers leading up to Syndicate's release in February.
The game is a remake of a 1993 shooter, originally released for Commodore Amiga and PCs, set in a not-so-impossible future where human minds are used as meaty hard drives for corporations, who pump them full of information via neural implants.

September 28, 2011 –
Brazilian dance rockers CSS and JD Samson's electro-pop act MEN will team up for a North American tour that kicks off next week, but their high-energy collaboration will extend beyond the stage. At each gig, fans will have a chance to buy an exclusive 7-inch vinyl single called We Are Friends, on which CSS remix MEN on one side, and vice-versa. Listen to the results here.
CSS energize "Rip Off," from MEN's debut Talk About Body, with noise-punk bite, filling every inch of the original's spareness with fuzzed-out guitar jabs and relentless rock drums. The song's lyrics are about the creative process of making music, which appealed to CSS. "'Rip Off' is a very close-to-the-heart song because it's about songwriting and producing, and gives away a lot of how MEN exists and creates," Luiza Sá tells SPIN.